The Big Quit is changing work

How are you feeling about your job? Tired, uninspired, resentful? Looks like you and billions of others. Many say the global pandemic gives us a chance for the world to right itself – it turns out that may include how we work.

Call it the Great Resignation, the Big Quit, or, if you’re Chinese, Tang ping – in some parts of the world staff are walking out of their jobs in record numbers.

In the United States, a record 4.3 million quit their jobs in August, an intriguing phenomenon that appears to have raised to the surface what many of us have asked ourselves for some time – there’s got to be a better way.

The ‘‘Great Resignation’’ doesn’t mean giving up work. Many are quitting because they think they can get a better job or are start their own businesses.

Others have decided to retire early, even on a smaller income, because they’ve realised they value time more than money.

Back here in New Zealand, recruiters are talking about people walking out of fulltime jobs and joining the much more lucrative world of contracting. The upside is higher hourly rates, flexibility to work when you want to and a greater variety of work. The downside: no protection like sick pay, holiday pay or superannuation contributions.

But weigh it up and what do you get? A big part of the workforce that’s had enough. And it turns out Covid made them think this way.

A recent AUT survey showed about half as many people are committed to sticking with their job this year compared with

2020, although, to be fair, only 1042 people were surveyed.

Being locked down at home for months nearly drove some of us mad, but it also gave us more time with loved ones, in the garden, going for walks, exercising – all those things we try to cram into the eight hours or less we have spare after working and sleeping.

The exodus is being driven by Millennials and Generation Z, unsurprisingly, as they are more steps removed from the concept of a job for life and much more comfortable with shortterm contracts.

I know when I look back on my work-life so far, I wonder why I stayed at jobs I loathed or had become bored with. Somehow, I think we all got sold on the concept of a career, when really, whatever we do, is just a series of different jobs with increasing responsibility.

Somewhere it was instilled in us that we should just be grateful for a job. But, even more, we’ve been brought up that quitting is weak.

Well, quitting, it turns out, is on trend. Divorce rates are up, more people are said to be leaving their religion, some are even ditching their social media accounts.

Now walking away from your job is the next thing in vogue, with evidence to suggest people are looking for meaningful balanced lives without fear of economic misery and selling their soul for the company.

Our culture is one where we continually reward those who work long hours, allowing workaholics to carry that label like a badge of honour while those who work the hours they are paid for are passed over.

It’s not that we don’t want to work, but we need to feel we are doing something meaningful and Covid has given us a taste of a different world.

Many things are expected to change as we reach the other side of this global pandemic.

I’d like to think one of them might be our approach to work and what we want to spend our time doing.